One of Frank the Kid's foreign bodyguards lurched through the blown door at that very moment, spraying blood from multiple punctures, and ablaze from head to foot. The guy sent a pleading look to the men at the small table, then fell for ward into their midst.

Jules Sticatta tried to wrap the burning man in the tablecloth but the cloth itself ignited, then Sticatta's own clothing began to flame.

Don Stefano and the other lieutenant went to Sticatta's aid while Frank watched in agape horror, stunned by the sickening odor of burnt flesh.

Meanwhile the whole encampment had come alive with the furious crackling of gunshots, joined quickly after the bomb or whatever by the electrifying chatter of a machine gun.

Frank could hear people screaming around outside there, yelling urgent cries and instructions in the old tongue. The inside soldiers were piling up at the patio doors, trying to get a look at what they might be running into before they quit the temporary safety of the dining room.

Frank screamed at them, " 'ncarugnuti, (shirkers, or cowards) va! va! (get out there!) "

The ba-loom of a shotgun overhead partially drowned out the emotional command, but the patio door opened and a couple of the Sicilians went scrambling outside, only to return quickly in a sudden shower of gla.s.s from the windows above them.

And then Frank the Kid got a clear, un.o.bstructed look at the big cool b.a.s.t.a.r.d outside, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in black, standing right out in the open and daring them to come get him, blasting away at that crowd in the doorway with a big silver pistol, big heavy booms like that first one sending fantastically whistling slugs hurtling through those gla.s.s doors and splattering everything they touched.

Frank found himself on the floor, with the rest of them, though still shouting that they go out there and get that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Get him!

Something turned his attention momentarily to the stairway and he later recalled seeing his sister Philippa standing there on the bottom step, leaning against the wall and clasping a bleeding hand to her bosom. Their eyes met and she stammered, "I-I hit him, I know I did, but h--he didn't go down."

More urgent considerations were demanding his attention, however, and he took only pa.s.sing notice of his sister who refused to act like a woman.

The malacarni had apparently found their pride, or something, and they were scrambling out windows and doors and racing into that open combat zone. Frank leapt to his feet and shouted them on, then turned back to see about his father.

It had all come so d.a.m.ned fast.

The whole place was shooting flames.

Carmine Drasco was standing at a window overlooking the carport and yelling for somebody to bring the cars around.

Jules Sticatta was stumbling around in his underwear, groaning with pain and being a.s.sisted by Don Stefano. Poor Jules was in bad shape; a single glance was all it took to know that.

They'd all be in a similar spot if they didn't do something quick, that much was also evident.

"What're we doing?" Frank yelled at his father.

"Getting outta here!" the elder Angeletti yelled back. "You go tell those boys of yours, they scatter before the zafJa (police) come. You tell 'em!"

Frank swallowed hard, got his legs under him, and ventured outside. By some miracle he lucked onto one of the crew bosses right outside the door and pa.s.sed the instruction; then he went back to help Papa get Jules Sticatta to the car.

The other explosions came as they were hurrying into the vehicles, four big blasts that shook the air, sending instant flames rolling skyward, and Carmine Drasco gasped, "Oh, Jesus, I just saw a bunch of boys run right into that!"

But there was no time to mourn the dying. The big limousine leapt forward and sped across the lawn toward the escape gate at the rear, the tricky secret exit which Frank himself had dreamed up for his Emperor's Key clientele.

Carmine's personal wheelman was driving. Drasco himself and his longtime bodyguard were also up front. Stefano and the painfully injured Jules Sticatta were in the back. Frank and Philippa sat tensely on the jump seats. A backup car of hardmen was right on their rear b.u.mper.

Frank looked back upon the scene of combat as they cleared the gate and shot up the back road. His beautiful f.u.c.king joint was wreathed in flames, burning . . . burning to the f.u.c.king ground.

"So fast," Frank groaned. "It happened so fast."

"How'd he do it?" Drasco's bodyguard muttered, scowling into the rear-view mirror. "In broad daylight. How'd the guy do it?"

Philippa was pressing a blood-soaked handkerchief against a bullet graze on the back of her hand. She was scared-sure-like the rest of them . . . but more than that, she was stunned, really out of it. "I hit him," she was whispering. ". . I know I hit him."

"I saw the guy," Frank announced. "Plain as day, big as a mountain, I saw him."

"Big deal," somebody up front growled in a half-audible sneer. "He saw him."

"Shut up!" Papa Angeletti roared from the back seat. "All of you just shut up! Maybe we ain't out of it yet!"

Frank shivered and glanced over his shoulder for a comforting peek at the loaded crew wagon behind them. Even Don Stefano, the unshakable, the unflappable-even he was scared. When Papa yelled and talked like the streets, yeah . . . Frank the Kid knew, the old man was shook and flapping.

The two-car caravan screeched around a corner, edging out a green panel truck which was angling into that same crossroads. The truck gave them. plenty of room-then they ignored the warning sirens and also beat a procession of fire trucks into the intersection at Germantown Avenue . When they were leveled out and eating pavement toward home, the wheelman lifted his gaze into the rearview to watch the last of the emergency vehicles' disappear.

"Bet I know where they're headed," he commented quietly.

"Already?" Frank asked under his breath.

How could everything be happening so fast? How could those fire trucks already be. . . ?

He sighed and declared aloud, "I think we got ourselves a mess."

"You think, you think," the Don grumbled. "Listen, and you mark me what I'm saying! I gonna get his head! I gonna get that wise guy's head and I gonna make me a boccie ball outta it! You mark me!"

Frank the Kid was marking him.

But he was still shivering in his hundred-dollar boots . . . and with no legs, no legs at all, under him.

Frank Angeletti would have shivered even harder if he'd known about the green panel truck which was laying off their tails by about a cool city block and the ice-eyed man in black who, with cold singleness of purpose, was tracking the hit to the next zone of combat.

Chapter 7.

Behind the Numbers.

The firemen were battling to contain the furiously blazing fires and trying to prevent a spread to the other buildings on the property.

Two emergency medical units had pulled into the edge of the fire zone and attendants were hurrying about, checking life signs among the victims.

Uniformed officers cautiously poked about the grounds, while photographers and other police specialists preserved various items of hard evidence.

Captain Wayne Thomkins, Chief of Special Details for the Philadelphia Police Department, stood at the edge of the scene with a small group of state and federal officers. The Captain's face was a study in anger, bafflement-perhaps embarra.s.sment. He asked the FBI representative on the Bolan task force what must have been a purely rhetorical question to all others present. "Well, what's the verdict? Was it a Bolan hit?"

Agent Joseph Persicone nodded his head and murmured, "I'd say so. It's fairly typical. He usually leaves a mess like this."

"I see it but I still can't believe it," the Captain said. "I don't see how one man, acting alone, can. . ."

"I don't either, but he does it," Persicone insisted.

"The medics have already tabulated fifteen dead.

G.o.d knows how high the count will go when we start through the rubble."

"That's typical too," the agent said, sighing.

Another plain-clothes officer stepped into the group and whispered something in Thomkins' ear. The Captain nodded and said, "I sure do. Send him over."

The cop hurried away.

Persicone asked, "What was that?"

"We had a stake-out here," Thomkins replied, the red of his face seeming to deepen. "We're getting the guy in here now to get his story."

One of the men in the group snickered and commented, "Some stake-out."

"We're on EPA here," the Captain growled. He was referring to the "Extreme Precaution Apprehension" routine. "Let's hear what the man has to say."

It was a high-echelon group attending this aftermath of a ma.s.sive Executioner strike. Persicone was chief of a special federal strike force which had been turned onto the chase for Mack Bolan. Also present were too high-rankers from the state's criminal division, plus one of the top men of PhiladelphiaCounty. Others, many others, were busily setting up control-room operations downtown in an effort to contain Bolan's Philadelphia plans as much as possible. They had been racing the clock in an attempt to move ponderous machinery into place ahead of the approaching night. Obviously they had lost the race. Bolan was already loose and blitzing. In a city the size of Philadelphia, with all its normal problems, it was not easy to react quickly to a situation such as this one.

Thomkins' face seemed to be dwelling upon thoughts similar to this as the group of officials waited in restrained silence and watched the approach of a young plain-clothes officer.

The newcomer seemed nervous, somewhat apprehensive, as he introduced himself as "Detective Strauss". He extended a small leather notebook to Captain Thomkins and told him, "That's the story, sir. Second by second, blow by blow."

The Captain grunted and riffled the pages of the notebook without looking at it. He went right to the point, asking, "Where were you, Strauss?"

The detective pointed toward the southeast corner of the property. "Right around the corner, on Parklane. I even saw the guy go over the wall, Cap'n. I can't be sure of this, I mean I'm not dead positive but-well, I believe the guy was around here all afternoon. I think I even talked to him. He came over and got a light from me, small-talked for a minute or two."

Thomkins shot a quick glance at the FBI agent. Persicone grimaced and nodded his head in an affirmative reply to the mute question.

"All right, tell us about that," the Captain said to Strauss.

The young officer was losing his nervousness. He fixed the Captain with a steady gaze and told him, "He was driving a phone company truck, or at least I took it for one. And he was outfitted like a lineman. Climbing poles and stringing wire all around here, all afternoon. About, uh, five o'clock he was working the pole just down from me. Came over and asked for a light. Said something about not carrying enough matches for overtime. Asked me how much longer I'd have to hang around the neighborhood. I asked him what he meant-I was just waiting for a friend. He laughed, said okay, I could stick with that story if I wanted to. Asked me if the big joint back there was still a wh.o.r.ehouse. I said how the h.e.l.l would I know. He laughed again and went back to work. I didn't start to connect the guy until-"

"Just a minute," Thomkins interrupted. "You're saying the guy tumbled that you were a police officer on stake-out? Is that-?"

"Yes sir, he knew. We get that all the time, you know. Everyone seems to delight in fingering the fuzz."

One of the officials commented, "You're on the Bolan detail, right? You were here specifically to spot any smell of the guy in this neighborhood, around this known mob hangout. I presume you've been briefed on Bolan's tricks, his M.O. You've seen the artists' sketches, I'm sure, And yet you. . ?"

Strauss colored, but stuck his chin a bit higher in the reply. "I called in and asked for a phone company verification when I first noticed this lineman. I got a confirmation that work was scheduled for this area but that's all I could get. Somebody at headquarters was supposed to be checking it out but I never heard any more about it. Meanwhile, the guy was going about his business like he knew what he was doing. I had no reason to suspect that he-"

"All right, Strauss," Thomkins put in. "This isn't a civil service hearing. No one's accusing you of dereliction. What else do you have to tell us? You said you saw him going over the wall?"

"Yes sir. I'm pretty sure it was him, I mean the same guy, the lineman. The place where he went over was a bad angle for me, though. I mean, it was just a flash glimpse, but I'm sure he came out of that phone company truck-and then, flash, he's going over the wall and out of sight. He'd been wearing this jumpsuit, you know, coveralls-like some linemen wear-the tool kit, spikes, all that. But he's. .h.i.tting that wall now rigged up for war, I mean heavy combat. But it was a bad angle, and I guess I sat there for a couple of seconds wondering if I'd actually seen what I thought I'd seen. You know how those things go. You're sitting there for hours, looking for something-then when you see it, you wonder if your eyes are leaping at ghosts. Well . . . then I called in the contact report and dispatch ordered me to stay with the car. And I did, until the shooting started. I reported that also, then went out to see what I could see. All h.e.l.l was breaking loose by then. I mean explosions, fire, the whole bit."

Thomkins was glaring at something in the detective's notebook. "You sure these times are right?" he asked in a m.u.f.fled voice.

"Yes sir. I paid particular attention to that. You can check it out with dispatch. Those are the exact times-"

"You're saying two minutes or less," Thompkins said in that same m.u.f.fled tone. "You're saying the guy raised all this h.e.l.l in just two minutes?"

"Ninety seconds, sir," Strauss reported, tightlipped. "Exactly. He was ninety seconds inside those walls, that's all."

"That's all," the Captain echoed.

"Yes sir. I was running along the road just outside the wall, trying to get in close enough to read the license on that panel truck. The guy came back over the wall before I could get halfway there; then all those smaller buildings went to h.e.l.l. When the smoke cleared, the guy was gone. Some of those inside left at about that time also. I saw two big limousines streaking out the back way."

Persicone muttered, "And the Don got away." "Sir?"

Thomkins was working at another angle of thought. He snapped, "Then how did we . . . ?" He stabbed a finger at an aide and barked, "Time of response!"

"Five forty-two," the man replied, without referring to notes. "Fire department also responded at that same time. Citizen's report, gunshots and fire at the corner of-"

The Captain's eyes were all but rolling in their sockets as he cut into the report with a snarl at Persicone: "Four minutes before Strauss called in his contact, before the show even started. So who the h.e.l.l called, Joe? Don't tell me . .. don't."

The FBI man was studying his watch. With a half-smile playing at his mouth, he murmured, "What'd it take us to get out here? . About five minutes?"

"About that!" Thomkins snapped.

"Probably called it in from a pole," Persicone decided, openly grinning now. "I'd say he timed it pretty close-closer than I'd care to try. He calls the cops and the firemen, romps in, knocks the joint over, slides out-and he's got half of official Philadelphia protecting his withdrawal. Pretty cute, eh?"

"h.e.l.l, I can't buy that," the Captain growled.

"You will," the FBI man a.s.sured him. "Right now, I believe we'd better start worrying about his next punch. It will be coming, and soon. We'd better start figuring where."

"No worry there," Thomkins snarled. "All we have to do is sit back and wait for his next call!"

The FBI agent shifted his gaze to the young detective, Strauss. He showed him a sympathetic smile and asked him, "Could you give us an accurate reading of that lineman's face? Could you describe it in pretty fair detail to a police artist?"

The embarra.s.sed officer dropped his eyes from that knowing gaze and replied, "I guess not, sir. To tell the truth, I never got a really clear look at that face, sir."

Persicone nodded understandingly and told Captain Thomkins, "You can see the size of our problem, Wayne. We're not simply going against another wanted man, or some kind of nut. We're up against a genius, a real pro, a guy who knows every trick in the combat book, an infiltration specialist, a method actor and-"

"And a blitz artist," Thomkins interrupted, sighing. "A brazen b.a.s.t.a.r.d, at that. He knew we had the place under surveillance. He drops in on our cop and lets him know he knows. Then he just waltzes over and. .. Okay. Okay, Joe. I'm buying the guy. Where do I make my down payment?"

"Let's go ask Don Stefano about that," Persicone suggested. He smiled, a droll flick of lips and eyes, and added, "If there's still time."